Is It Love Understanding the Difference Between Unhealthy Attachments and Pure Love - Formatted

Now I began with love because there's another principle that we can understand about love and that is that whatever you love most becomes your master. So if you want to know what you are a slave to and by the way, let's clarify everyone is a slave to something.

Everyone is a slave to something. The atheist is a slave just as the agnostic just as the Christian, the Jew, the Buddhist and the Hindu. Every individual is a slave to something. The only difference is that different people enslave themselves to different things and I'll talk about some of the things that we enslave ourselves to when talking about false attachments.

But generally this principle is that whatever you love most becomes your master so you become a slave to whatever it is that you love most.

The Heart as a Vessel

Now when we look now at the concept of having our greatest love for Allah, our greatest hope in Allah, our greatest dependence on Allah, let's take a look at what the false attachments look like or what happens when we have these false attachments.

So I want you to think about the heart like a vessel, like a cup. It can hold a certain amount of stuff and I want you to think about the heart as having various layers. Now I want to talk specifically right now about the core of the heart.

Now I want you to think about the core of the heart, this is the (لُبّ - lubb), the lubb which is the most innermost part of the qalb. Now the lubb or the most innermost part of the qalb, that is what we will explain as the seat of worship.

Whatever is in the innermost core of the heart is your ilah.

Understanding Ilah

And now I've just given another very important term. You've heard this word before you probably say it many times a day in the shahada you say (لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ - La ilaha illallah). Now when you're saying (لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ) you're saying a very very profound statement and a lot of us don't actually understand the implications and the depth of this statement.

Literally when you're saying (لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ) you are saying there is nothing worthy of being an ilah except for Allah. That's what you've said. You've said there is no ilah, there is nothing worthy of being an ilah except for God, except for Allah.

Now we have to talk about the meaning of ilah. What is an ilah? When we say there is nothing else that can be an ilah but God, what are we really saying?

Ilah is not only that thing you pray to. Ilah is also that which you put at the core of your heart. Ilah is what you put at the core of your qalb.

Examples of False Ilahs

Therefore:

• Your money can be an ilah - and for many people money is an ilah. Money is something that they put at the core of their hearts. They love it more than any other thing. They fear losing it more than any other thing. They put their dependence on it more than any other thing. They put their hope in it more than any other thing and that makes it an ilah.
• Power can be an ilah - A person who has power at the core of their heart will act unjustly because they will do anything for power.
• Another person can be an ilah - A person can be at the core of your heart and that person can be a competitor with Allah.

The Consequence of False Worship

It's actually as if they're worshipping their money and that thing that you put at the core of your heart as I mentioned you become a slave to it. And so such people who I describe as their greatest love is for money, their greatest hope is in money, their greatest dependence is in money, their greatest fear is of losing money, they become slaves to money.

And that is the reason why you'll find that there are people out there who will do anything for money. That's because they've become slaves to it. Whatever will give them money, they'll do it and it doesn't matter if it involves killing, it doesn't matter if it involves stealing, it doesn't matter if it involves going and occupying other countries, bombing and raping. This is because it becomes a master for these people. You become a slave to it and that's because you've put it at the core of your heart.

And you will find that anytime someone puts an ilah in the core of their heart, other than Allah, that person will by definition, listen carefully, that person will by definition act unjustly.

So anytime, I'm going to repeat that because it's very important: anytime a person puts something at the core of their heart other than God, that person will by definition act unjustly. And that is because the heart becomes corrupted when it is filled at the core with other than Allah.

The Trial of Children

Now again, I'm speaking about the core because it doesn't mean that we cannot love other things, it means that the core which is saved for worship, which is saved for your ilah, can only be for God and if anything else is put there it will cause destruction in that heart and it will cause oppression in the action of that individual.

Now I'll give you another example a person who has another individual, another human being at the core of their heart will act unjustly and let me give you an example of that. This is something that a lot of, especially us women we are often not taught that there is a right and a wrong way to love people.

And this is the first one I'm going to begin with because this becomes one of the greatest trials especially for women and that is our own children.

The Test of Parenthood

When a woman becomes a mother or a man becomes a father, that child becomes one of the greatest tests for that human being and that is why if you look in the Quran, Allah lists two things as being a great test or a fitna and that is wealth and children and we also find that Ibrahim (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ) - what was he tested in? He was tested in his child, in his son.

So we find that actually one of the greatest tests for a mother or a parent generally is their own child and unfortunately we live in a society and I'll say that this is very much emphasized in certain cultures especially, is that as soon as you have a child especially women, when a woman has a child, all of a sudden, there is the internal fitra, right, which already is extreme rahma, extreme mercy for that child.

It's the greatest show of mercy we have on this earth, right, that Allah is the source of that mercy but this is the mercy that Allah describes in the hadith that the mercy of a mother for her child, that Allah is the source of that mercy and Allah's mercy is greater than a mother for her child but this is the greatest deepest form of human mercy, right, and so that mercy already makes that, the test of our children there, right because there's already that fitra but then you add to that, there's a lot of cultural teachings as well.

Cultural Programming of Unhealthy Attachment

Where there's this idea that as soon as you have a child, as soon as you become a mother, you are now nothing else, right, or nothing else really matters quite as much that the rest of your identity kind of falls away because now you're a mother and now we're almost taught to take our children and culturally it's typically take our son, right, if we have a son and there's this idea that we take our son and we put him at the center of our existence and then we start to revolve our life around that child, right, everything becomes about that boy typically, it's typically with our sons and this is of course much more so in some cultures more than others but we see this very unhealthy attachment to our sons or our children generally.

And that is something that causes a lot of problems, now I mentioned that when you put something else at the core of your heart other than Allah two things will happen:

1. You damage your own heart
2. You actually cause harm to the object itself

So you actually doing two types of harm: harm to your own self, to your own heart and then also harm to that other individual.

The Gas Tank Analogy

Now in this case, I want you to think about the heart as as I said it's a vessel, now imagine that you think of the heart like a gas tank, alright so I use this example in my class where if you take your car to the gas station and now you decide okay, I'm empty and so I need to fill up with gas right, some people call it petrol whatever you want to call it the thing you put in your gas tank, right.

So you go there and you realize that day that gas is super expensive and so you know orange juice is on sale, so you decide okay, I'm gonna take the orange juice and I'm gonna put that in my gas tank instead of the gas. Now what happens? Well you've just put orange juice in a vessel that was only created to hold gasoline right, this vessel this creation, right this is a creation, this you know, a manufacturer made this car, right, so you've just taken this vessel that was manufactured to only hold gasoline and you've put orange juice in it.

Now you tell me what happens to that car? Well, that car is broken. Now you've destroyed the car and you've destroyed the gas tank. This is exactly what happens to us when we put other than Allah in the gas tank of our hearts.

When we put our children in the core of our hearts, when we put our money when we put power when we put image or status or what other people think.

Worshipping Others' Opinions

Let me talk a little bit about what that looks like when we worship other people's opinions. What does that look like? Well when I have in the core of my heart the most important thing to me is that I appear a certain way to other people, that the most important thing to me is how other people view me, how other people view me and my family and my children and then I essentially become obsessed with my image, right.

And now we have of course social media which is a platform to sort of put that image on display of course the photoshop version, right, like we have a photoshop version of our lives that we put out there. We have a photoshop version, a filtered version of our marriage or of our children or of our lives, right, we want to get a specific type of image across and of course that image is that we're perfect, our children are perfect, our relationships are perfect, our marriage is perfect, our life is perfect, right, we're having lots and lots of fun, we're very productive.

Right now that we're on lockdown different, you know that we have certain images that we want to portray you know, and there's this filtered version that we put out there, why? Oftentimes it's because

we're very very concerned about our image, we're very concerned about what people think about what people will say about us.

The Extreme Consequences

This is so deep that sometimes a person will actually subject themselves, listen to this some people will actually subject themselves and their own children to abuse just so that other people won't say they got divorced, listen to that carefully, that we're so obsessed that we worship other people's opinions of us, that we worship what other people think so much that we are willing to stay even in an abusive relationship just so that people will not say she got divorced or he got divorced or my daughter got divorced.

And I have cases from all over the world of this type of thing where even if a woman is abused she will even go to her family and her own family will tell her, have sabr sister, right, and by the way, sabr does not mean allowing yourself to be abused. Sabr does not mean being passive, sabr does not mean you slap me on this cheek, I turn my cheek so you can more easily slap me on this cheek, that's not the meaning of sabr.

And we have for too long abused the concept of sabr to keep people victimized to keep people down. That's not what Allah and his messenger have taught us, we are abusing the religion, and we're doing it to control people, and to control the image that we want to portray to others, we need to stop doing that.

But that happens when we worship the opinion of others when we literally worship our image.

The Riba Example

I have to appear to be the perfect family I have to appear to be the perfect wife and the perfect mother and I even have to have the perfect skin, right, and if I don't, you have a filter, you know, to make it look perfect you know, we live in a world of photoshopping everything, right, you see images of people on magazines, that's not really what they look like, because they're photoshopped everything is photoshopped.

And unfortunately we live in a very Instagram you know, type of world where everything is about how you appear and you have to appear perfect you have to be perfect and you have to look perfect and you have to keep up this facade of being perfect.

Now the problem here is that you've made your focal point something other than Allah. You're worshipping your image, you're worshipping the opinion of others and when you do that, you are oppressing yourself, and then you are oppressing others.

And this is exactly what I want us to understand that when we put something else at the core of our heart, these are called unhealthy attachments when we put something else at the core of our heart other than Allah and we worship it, and we love it as we should only love Allah.

Sometimes this is fashion, you know what I mean, like some of us, we might worship fashion like fashion says, okay now it's in fashion to dress like this so we hear and we obey, then fashion tomorrow changes and says, well actually we changed our mind, now fashion is saying this, that we have to wear this, and then we just go along, we hear and we obey it's like we're slaves to fashion.

And if it's something that is completely inappropriate or it's something that goes against the Quran and the Sunnah, but we follow it because we're worshipping fashion again, because we've made fashion at the core of our hearts, looking a certain way, and sometimes what we can do is that when we are so worried about how we appear it can become a competitor with the commands of Allah.

And I'll give you a few examples, when money is at the core of the heart, and then on the one hand you have this opportunity to get more money using Riba, or getting involved in Riba, or selling alcohol so now you have this opportunity to get more money, but it involves something that is forbidden and then you have on this hand Allah saying, but it's forbidden.

Maybe we love the image of having a really giant house so everyone can look at our house and say, wow look at that, or we want the brand new car that we can't afford but we want people to say, wow that's a really nice sweet ride, and we don't have the money for it, but there's opportunity to do it with Riba, so now we're faced with a choice, on the one hand Allah has spoken about Riba in the Quran in a way he has spoken about nothing else.

He has said that the people who do not give up Riba let them prepare for a war waged against them by God and his messenger, that is really strong terminology and yet we so easily involve ourselves in Riba why? Because we worship what people think, because we worship image, we worship status symbols, and that becomes even more important than the commandment of Allah.

And so in essence we start to see, what is it really at the core of our hearts, is it Allah? If it is Allah, then when Allah makes a command we are told in the Quran, that the people who really have Allah there at the core of their hearts, when a command is made, we hear and we obey.

But if we have something else there, we're not able to hear the command of Allah and we hear and we obey, and we see this in something else as well, and sometimes that happens with hijab is that we live in a society that's all about look a certain way you know, look your best appearances, appearances, appearances this Instagram culture where everything is about how you look how you appear.

And so we start to almost worship that, we start to make that our focal point and now, when our appearance becomes our focal point, when it becomes our obsession, when it becomes one of the most

important things to us and then Allah comes and says, cover it up it becomes a struggle, it becomes very difficult, and a lot of that has to do internally with what is at our core what is most important to us is it being beautiful to society, or is it being beautiful to Allah.

So we find that when we have something else at the core, when we put orange juice in the gas tank, we are not able to as I said, you know, be just we are not able to love Allah and obey Allah as we are commanded to love Him and obey Him, we are not able to fear Allah as we were told to fear Him, because something else is there, and there isn't space for Allah and His commandments.

The Shattering Effect

The other thing that happens is this, and this is something that leads me to the concept of loving in the right way, and how when we don't love in the right way, when we have other things at our core it shatters the heart when you put orange juice in the gas tank, you are destroying that car, you are destroying that tank, similarly when we have put other things at our core, we shatter our own hearts we break the human being.

That is actually the reason at a core level, why a human being breaks. Don't think that it's hardships that break a human being, hardships don't break a human being, what breaks a human being is loving anything as you should only love Allah, fearing anything as you should only fear Allah, putting your hope and trust in anything as you should only put your hope and trust in Allah, depending on anything as you should only depend on Allah.

That is what breaks the human being. That is what breaks the heart of the human being. That's what breaks the psyche of the human being, it is not our hardships because Allah that if Allah holds you up, if Allah is at your core, if a person has a healthy heart, Allah will enable that person to withstand the hardest of afflictions, that Allah will hold that person up.

The Resilience of the Believer

And I have met individuals who have been through calamities and afflictions that would make your hair grow white, and yet they were able to get through it and not just survive it, but thrive inside of it, to be able to grow stronger in it, to be able to still live and live thriving. And that can only happen when Allah is at the core. And when Allah is at the core, that heart becomes like something amazing, right? That heart becomes so resilient that it can withstand the fire of life, the storms of life.

The Sequoia Analogy

I use this analogy of the sequoias. This is like, these sequoias, this is a type of tree, which is so resilient that it's almost like fireproof, like it's resistant to fire. And I was just amazed when I found out that Allah had created the sequoia like that, right? And I realized that the heart of the believer can be like a sequoia, that the heart of the believer can actually be resistant to fire.

Now, that doesn't mean that we don't feel pain. It doesn't mean we don't feel sadness. In fact, these are normal human emotions, they're things that prophets felt, right? Sadness, we know that Yaqub عليه السلام felt, we know that the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم had the year of sadness, this is normal.

But I'm not talking about normal emotion. I'm talking about being broken. I'm saying that the heart that is healthy (قَلْبٌ سَلِيمٌ) a heart that has Allah supreme inside of it, will be able to withstand the most harshest of fires, the most harshest of storms in this life, because Allah is that person's strength.

Allah holds that person up. And if Allah holds someone up, then that person can never fall. That person will not, and when I say can never fall, and I wanna again clarify, it doesn't mean that person doesn't falter.

It doesn't mean that person becomes perfect. It doesn't mean that person will not commit sins. That's not what I mean.

I mean that person will not be destroyed. That person may fall, and that person may cry, and that person will go through pain, and that person will go through fear perhaps, but that person will not become broken and destroyed. Because Allah will hold that person up, and will allow that person to withstand the fire of their hardships.

The Purification Process

And now, and inshallah I'll wrap it up with this, that fire that that person goes through actually ends up purifying that person, actually ends up strengthening that person rather than destroying that person. And that is absolutely amazing. This is what Allah talks about in the Quran, when he says:

That Allah says that he sends afflictions. And the reason, one of the reasons he sends afflictions is in order to purify (تَمْحِيص) (tamhees), purify those who believe. And when you talk about this word (تَمْحِيص) (tamhees), it's literally the same word that's used for the burning or the heating of gold. And when you heat up gold, you remove the impurities from gold (تَمْحِيص) tamhees.

It's a process that gold goes through to become pure, right? And Allah puts the hearts of believers, Allah puts believers through that same process of purification and (تَمْحِيص) (tamhees), but it involves that fire. It involves the fire of affliction.

But, and here again, here is the difference. Here is the difference. When a heart is (سَلِيم) salim, when a heart is healthy, when a heart has tawheed inside of it, when a heart has Allah Supreme, not their money, not their power, not their image, not what other people think, not fashion or society standards, not their culture. A lot of people worship their culture.

Their culture is at the core of their heart. Allah and his messenger can say one thing, but culture says another. We hear and we obey our culture, right? Our forefathers, right? But our forefathers did it like this, just like Quraysh said, right? But our forefathers did it this way.

And so when a heart has Allah at the center, has Allah at the core, rather than these other things, not another person, even if it's your own child, even if it's your own spouse, there's a healthy and an unhealthy way to love. And the only way to love in a healthy way is to have Allah at the core, and then we can love in a healthy way.

And so if a heart has Allah at the core and has no competitor with Allah at its core, then that heart, when it goes through afflictions, instead of being destroyed, it becomes strengthened. It becomes purified.

Closing

I say this, and Allah has forgiven me and you. He is Forgiving and Merciful.

"Glory be to Allah, I bear witness that there is no God but You. I seek forgiveness from You and repent to You."

"May Allah reward you with good. I seek Allah's forgiveness."

Q&A Session Highlights

Can Love Be Distributed?

Question: Speaking of terminology, muhabba is also an Arabic word used for love and comes from the word that is related to erase. Does Islam emphasize this when speaking of love, that you won't truly love something if you don't erase everything else? Can love be distributed?

Answer: So essentially, as I mentioned, it is, yes, love can be distributed, yes. But worship cannot, right? So there is a different, and this is why I'm using these terms because we have to start to understand the difference between love and worship, all right? We have to start to understand the difference between unhealthy attachments and true love. They're not the same thing, and they look different and they cause absolute different result.

So we can love many things, right? We can love and we should love our children and our spouse and our parents. In fact, Allah tells us in Surah At-Tawbah, if you go and you look at this ayah in Surah At-Tawbah, Allah lists all the things that we love, right? And he lists a list of things all halal to love, right?

"Say, if your parents, your children, your spouses, your relatives, your business in which you fear decline, your dwelling in which you delight - if any of these things are more beloved to you than Allah and his messenger and striving in his cause, then wait until Allah brings about his decision."

The Nature of Unhealthy Attachments

Question: How do I know that something isn't in the core center of my heart? Like how do you know you're getting distracted?

Answer: So you'll know because whatever fills your heart fills your mind. So that's one of the first way to know that whatever you think about and obsess about all the time, to the extent that it causes you a lot of anxiety, it's like, it's not actually giving you peace.

It becomes like a drug addiction. You'll feel it because there's something unhealthy internally. So this will become:

• The first thing on your mind when you wake up
• The last thing before you sleep
• What keeps you up at night
• The thing that you fear most
• The thing that causes you the most pain
• The thing that causes you the most anxiety
• The thing you think about all throughout your prayer

And also one other thing is the inability to be balanced. This is very essential. You will not be able to be just and balanced. You will not be able to have a balance in your life because you will always be leaning towards that which is at the core.

The Concept for Non-Muslims

Question: How does this apply for non-Muslims? I have a brother who's struggling a lot and I feel like Islam could help him, but I don't know how to introduce him to it.

Answer: This concept, by the way, applies to everyone because Allah created the human being with this nature. Allah did not only create the Muslim or the believer with this nature.

Every human being is created with a (قَلْب) qalb. Every human being is created with a heart. Every human being is created with the fitrah of wanting to seek Allah.

Allah asked all of the souls, right? Before we even were put in bodies, before we even came to this life, Allah asked every single one, am I not your Lord? And every single soul, so this person's brother, every non-Muslim, every Muslim, everyone, the Buddhist, the atheist, the agnostic, the Jew, everyone said (بَلَىٰ شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna). Every single person, they took that witness, they bore witness that Allah is their Lord.

So in every single human being, Muslim or non-Muslim, deep, deep down, there is that recognition of the higher power of God as a fitrah. It is the deep down nature placed in every human being, Muslim or non- Muslim. And so the job of that human being is to remove all the covering over that fitrah, to remove all the covering over that pure part inside that seeks God.

The Islamic Way to Recover from Heartbreak

Question: What is the Islamic way to recover from heartbreak?

Answer: I have an entire class that I gave and it was made into a transcription, which inshallah I'll have more widely available soon. It's called Shattered Glass. And this was about essentially healing, right? After heartbreak and building emotional first aid, like having a first aid kit.

But I'll just give you sort of a really quick summary of that. The easiest way to heal is, I'm gonna give you guys an analogy. You know if a person has gotten like dumped or like has heartbreak from like a breakup, what's the quickest, most sort of painless way to get over that breakup or that heartbreak is that people usually try to find someone else to replace that person, right?

So they kind of say like, you don't get over someone until you find someone better, right? Okay, let's use that concept here for a second. The easiest way to get over the false attachment to the creation is to find something better. And that's the creator.

The easiest way to get over the false attachment to dunya is to find something better, which is akhira. And Allah tells us in the Quran:

"How is it that you prefer the life of this world when the hereafter is better and it's more lasting."

So when we compare the creation to the creator, we don't even, we can't even, there's no comparison. The example I give in my book, Reclaim Your Heart, inshallah I'll wrap up with this, is like a child who sees a toy Ferrari, right? He's walking by a toy store and in the window he sees a toy Ferrari.

And now this child literally becomes obsessed with this toy Ferrari. That's all he can think about. It's all he can talk about. It's all he can pray about. I want that Ferrari, I want that Ferrari.

Now, finally, when he gets that Ferrari and you try to take that Ferrari out of that child's hand, it will be the end of the world because he has got such an attachment to that Ferrari, right? Have you ever tried to take a toy out of the hand of a child who's really attached? It's like the end of the world, right?

But what happens to that attachment to the toy when that child sees a real Ferrari, right? Not the toy, not the lesser version, but the real thing. Now, when that child is looking at the real Ferrari, he can let go of that toy easily.

Do you understand? And that's what we have to do is that the easiest way to remove these false attachments from our hearts of the creation is to focus on the creator because it's seeing what is greater, right? It's by focusing on the hereafter.

How can we become obsessed with this life? How can we become attached to the toy car of Dunya when there is a life that is better and more lasting? That's the real Ferrari.

And so when a person wants to remove sort of the false toy cars, right? The lesser versions from their heart, you can like rip it out, right? But that's like trying to rip out that toy car from the kid's hand. That's very hard and it's very painful.

And I think a lot of people try to do it that way. And sometimes it happens against their, sometimes against their will, that thing is ripped out. That person will let them down. That person will hurt them. That person will be disloyal to them. That person will leave them. That's the tearing of that toy car from the hand of the child.

It is extremely painful and it causes a lot of suffering. But if you could instead see something better and focus on that, focus on the greatness of the creator, it totally diminishes any greatness or so-called greatness in the creation that you're attached to.

And similarly with dunya, if you focus on the greatness of the hereafter, it diminishes the so-called greatness of this life, which by definition is lesser. The word dunya means that which is lower. This is by definition the lower life and the hereafter is the higher life.